April 29th is a break day in the A-Z Challenge

So I thought I'd write about a couple of other things that have been on my mind for the last few weeks while I have been doing all this Norse research work, which really wasn't all that hard for me because I am pretty into Norse stuff anyway. Next year though, if there is an A-Z challenge in April, I will think to pick a subject that has more letter options.

But I am digressing from my original point here, which was to NOT write about the Norse A-Z topic I picked this year and instead write about the other things that have been creeping into my brain during that time. First there's the whole Star Trek and Klingon Assault Group thing, both Star Trek gaming, mostly through Star Fleet Battles, but also a little through the FASA RPG have been a big deal for me and my game time in the past. The Klingon Assault Group, while it coincides slightly with the gaming, is another beast altogether. I want to recruit people to KAG, because dressing like a Klingon and acting like a Klingon is awesome fun; but I guess only if you are part of a particularly brave subset of Trekkie.

I have also been slowly working on my own realization of the 1985 TSR AD&D 1st edition Oriental Adventures book. I wrestle with some of the core ideas presented in that book, and I go back and forth over whether or not the book was too ambitiously focused on presenting an entire fantasy east Asia, while still being concentrated on Japan, or if they weren't ambitious enough and should have gone further in their attempt to include everything Asian with the same "kitchen-sink" approach they gave the western world with "regular" AD&D. As it stands, the book is a mostly Japanese game that could not decide on it's focus; was it going to be about court and intrigue? Those skills (sorry, proficiencies) were presented for the first time in any D&D product in the OA book. Was the game about serving a Lord or Clan or a Temple even? That's kind of implied in several class descriptions, but no real advice was given to the DM about how to make a well balanced party work together if it included, for instance, a Samurai, a Ninja and a Sohei. The "normal" adventuring paradigm of AD&D was broken in OA, and no fixed replacement was offered.

Add on top of that the fact that the game had a real issue deciding whether it wanted to emulate a Chanbara film or Ninja film or a Kung-Fu film and we have a problem. Many of the classes don't work well together, and, even if you are not a Monk, you can easily become a martial artist deadly enough to out class the party Samurai, as I saw in my last OA campaign when the Yakuza character took Tae Kwon Do instead of weapons proficiencies. The Wu Jen spell list is inadequate, and while I intend to reverse engineer that list from the 3e compatible magic books I snagged off Ebay that were designed for Rokugan and the Legend of the Five Rings Setting, I can only come to the inescapable conclusion, despite my love of 1st edition AD&D and my nostalgia for Oriental Adventures and the fun campaigns that I have played using those rules, that AEG and L5R were better conceived and better designed than the rush job that I suspect that 1st edition OA was. The best thing I can say about 1st edition's AD&D Oriental Adventures is that it is far superior to the abortion that was 3e OA.

There are gems in the 1st edition OA books, I have seen mentioned on other blogs recently the Yearly,Monthly,Daily events tables. The court game might have worked if they had separated out weapon proficiencies from the "peaceful" ones. The Samurai class might have been less the super class that it was if it hadn't gotten a requirement to specialize in two weapons, something BANNED to every other class. The Kensai, which should be spelled Kensei, needs a total reworking, it is a valid class idea, but screwing him over by never letting him wear any armor OR have a magic weapon of his "chosen" type blows. The two "Cleric" classes of OA both suck though, the Sohei is just a second class Fighter until finally receiving some spells at 6th level? The Shukenja (which should be spelled Shugenja) can't fight anything BUT spirits? Ninja as a "Split-Class" = dumb idea, easy enough to create a Shinobi class, I did it once and I can do it again.

Currently I am reading a lot of Japanese history, watching Samurai movies about the Sengoku Jidai era and reading books about the Samurai and Bushido written during the Tokugawa era, while I am not reading and studying up on Norse history and lore. Obviously, I think the focus of Oriental Adventures should be on Japan and Japanese history and mythology, more focus is better. This is why OA1: Swords of the Daimyo was such a good sandbox to play in, it ignored all of the other nations of Kara-Tur, except for brief mentions. I think every single copy of Oriental Adventures should have come packaged with that module, although the adventures presented are weak.

The other thing that has me feeling nostalgic is my old Steppe Warriors guild, I recently spruced up our Facebook tribute page a bit, and I tried to get in touch with some of the old guys that I lost contact with over the years. AOL's Neverwinter Nights did go offline in July of 1997, we tried a few other online games, even text based ones, but none had the awesome community of AOL's NWN. We weren't there for long, and the core of us were local to the Oswego county area, which is why it was easy for us to have our reunions, at least in the beginning. But I miss all those guys, even the ones I have fought with over the years; and it kind of makes me sad that I never did get around to playing that Steppe Warrior campaign that I always wanted to. I even have a good idea for it now, but we've scattered to the four winds, and the ones left in the area mostly don't talk to each other anymore. Upstate New York's greatest export has always been it's people.

Now, lastly, I have a Dawn Patrol play report that's more than a week over due. We had decided the last time we played that we were sick and tired of random encounters with Fighters versus Two-Seaters and the whole "I fly straight for six squares to complete my mission, now try and shoot me down before I get home" BS. So we just decided on a Fighter engagement, and randomly chose French or British to engage the Germans; then rolled a die to advance the war a number of days. Since I got thee time wrong, and was running late to start with, all of this was taken care of before myself and John even made it to Big Darryl's house.

The date was February 10, 1917. Two Fighter patrols ran into each other deep inside German held territory. My son John and I played the French, we were flying Spad VIIs and the two Darryls were playing the Germans who were both flying Albatross DIIIs. Darryl Jr. was playing his pilot Vizefeldwebel Oskar Schaeffer, who was flying his second mission. Darryl Sr. was playing his pilot Oberleutnant Erich Von Reinstadt, who was flying his 10th mission. John was flying his pilot Lieutenant Guy Bernet and I was flying my pilot, the Serbian volunteer, Lieutenant Vaclev Petrovic; Lieutenant Bernet had two missions and was deemed the flight leader.

Now is the part where I wish I had written this out while it was clearer in my memory, I took a few notes, but I didn't bring the mission logs home with me, maybe I should do that in the future.

The mission started out well enough for us Frenchmen, we were all at high altitude and the Spads outperform the Albatrosses at pretty much every altitude anyway, their only advantage is their dual Spandau guns, which are deadly. We closed to dogfighting range and ended up in a line firing at each other's tails, poor Darryl Jr. in the lead with no target, everyone took a little bit of damage, except me, because I was in the back. It got a little chaotic then, it broke into two dogfights that kept running back into each other, we ban overt table talk during the game, but we can give some pointers about rules and tactics to newer players like John or Dalton (who didn't make this game). Sadly, seven turns into the game Schaeffer scored a critical engine hit on Bernet's plane and it exploded.

Now, completely out of character, it was the luckiest of hits possible, and I felt kind of bad because I shot down John the last time he played (while he was playing MY pilot I might add), so the poor kid has played twice now, and gotten shot down twice. He's a quick learner and he didn't do anything wrong here, except be unlucky; yes, if he stuck around he might have gotten shot down anyway, he was the least experienced player in the game, but I really hope it doesn't sour him on Dawn Patrol.

At that point, outnumbered two to one, you might think I'd just cut and run for my lines, right? Nope. I stuck it out for another ten turns. I'd like to say it was purely for vengeance for my downed comrade, but part of it was also because I was, up until that point, the only one in the group with a legitimate kill scored on another player, so I was trying to shoot Darryl Jr.'s pilot Schaeffer down to keep my record intact. I almost had him a couple of times, I missed at 50' range twice, my guns jammed once, and I had to do all this while evading the other Albatross DIII, not always successfully. Not all the bad luck went in the favor of the Germans, there were a couple of occasions where I almost certainly should have been shot down, both of my wings had sustained a lot of damage and my engine was two hits away from gone, I was just incredibly lucky on critical hit rolls.

In the end, I shot Schaeffer's plane up pretty bad, and Von Reinhardt had some minor damage too, but I was in a position where, if I stuck it out any longer, I was most likely going to give the Hun another aerial victory. I managed to maneuver so that I was pointed towards home and they were either too far behind me or pointed in the wrong direction, and broke for home. My plane had sustained an incredible amount of damage in the fighting, but luckily only one, relatively minor critical hit, to the wing. My Spad was still faster and more maneuverable, so they gave up the chase and the game was over. Lt.Petrovic added a mission to his resume, Vizefeldwebel Schaeffer added both a mission and a kill, and Lt. Von Rienhardt added another mission to his pretty impressive score.

So, if you live in central NY and you have an interest in playing Dawn Patrol, or helping to fix the bugs of 1st edition AD&D's Oriental Adventures through campaign play, or want to play in a B/X Norse campaign, or are interested in alpha-testing a B/X D&D World War II game, or are an old Steppe Warrior from AOL's NWN or one of the other Ordus like Nyrthellan's Woods or The Realm or Everquest or one of the eight million Facebook games we played as a group, or are interested in Star Trek, especially Klingons, but not limited to them, leave me a comment and I'll get back to you.  

A couple thoughts

First- I kind of suck at sitting down and trying to plan out an adventure. I have been called a great DM by a lot of people, so I have to assume they weren't all BSing me about my DMing skills; but I have a really hard time sitting down and creating an adventure. I am bad at making dungeons. I am bad at drawing maps. I can create a compelling campaign world, but I tend to avoid having to map as much as possible. I steal maps from other sources and repurpose them when possible. I can take a published adventure and make it my own, altering it beyond recognition from the original and I can do that on the fly. I can pull an entire evening's entertainment completely out of thin air based on a couple of die rolls and my knowledge of the campaign world; I am good at hex-crawls and other sandbox style stuff. It's creating unique locations and mapping them out ahead of time that I am bad at, I have made some pretty cool almost random dungeons on the fly. So I don't really write adventures, I write vague outlines of what the bad guys plans are and what will happen if they aren't stopped probably and update it after each session with the party's actions (or inactions); I also make liberal use of other people's ideas, particularly if they're better than mine.

Second- I have a mountain of Legend of the Five Rings RPG stuff (and some Sengoku stuff) that I won on EBay coming soon, just a head's up- there'll be a flurry of Mail Call activity in the near future. It's mostly for 1st edition, but since I have never played any edition I guess 1st edition is the place to start. Since my gaming group hasn't really met since Ashli went away to basic training I may try to kick start some gaming with L5R, maybe online via Google+ if I can't get everyone together in my regular gaming group.

Thirdly- I saw Paizo has a new product with Ninja's and Vikings in it. I laughed a little, I did the OA meets Vikings thing over a decade ago; it was a cool idea then and it's a cool idea now, I hope it does well for them.

Lastly- My daughter Ashli is getting a medical discharge from the US Army, that's our current crisis. She's been in the hospital at Fort Jackson for about 3 weeks now, she may be coming home soon. Since she is over 18 and it's a medical condition, I figure it's her place to tell people about it if she wants them to know.

Hot Elven Chicks and More!

I have to say I amused at the reaction that putting in hot elf chicks as an advertising the OSR idea brought forth from the OSR blogging community. I was going to have a really cool funny hot elf chick post but pretty much everyone beat me to the punch as I took most of this week off due to a scratched cornea blurring my vision. So here is a hot elf chick:



And here is a link to a blog that has already done the job of finding and linking all the best information about the OSR.

I apologize to those of you lured here hoping to find some awesome elf porn. I do hope you will check out the OSR stuff. Given my campaign proclivities a hot samurai chick was more likely, so here:



Think of it as a bonus.

Now on to the OSR content. My newest gamer ADD related campaign idea is to do zero prep work and just make an entire world randomly using the 1st edition DMG, including the dungeons. I figure it would kind of make a game like the old computer games I used to play when I had a chance. I was kind of inspired by the Welsh Piper's post here.

I have also been considering a campaign for my old Steppe Warrior friends that is actually set in the Steppe. I am short of good ideas for that though. What do you do for an adventure in a place with very few ruins or even permanent settlements? I think raiding the encampments of other tribes would get a little old after a while, as would raiding caravans or the settlements of neighboring settled peoples. Additionally, all of that raiding would seem to indicate that the prevailing alignments would be evil oriented and I have never liked the idea of D&D as a method of acting out evil impulses or exploring the dark side of the human psyche; I like heroic games.

The next thing I wanted to vent on was inspired by this post from gnome stew. I actually have a long history of gaming with people I wouldn't count as friends and, in my opinion, it only can work out when you have a new group forming. Then friendships form naturally or they don't. I have tried gaming with people that I knew and wasn't friends with and there is an artificial friendship that comes from gaming together, but in reality it usually, in my experience, just brings out how much you dislike the other person. I mean there is a reason they aren't your friends right? Maybe they have annoying personal habits or whatever.

Over the years I have gamed with a bunch of people that I have given the benefit of doubt for way too long just because they played D&D and there were damned few of us in the area at the time. They ranged from a guy with personal hygiene issues and a distinctly unpleasant attitude towards rules lawyering to the point of cheating who we tolerated because he always brought a ton of snacks and always had the newest books and supplements (2nd edition era), to a guy who was just kind of a dick but we played at his house who later became the groups DM, to an anti-social racist with a crass sense of humor that I just happened to have lived near most of my life and grew up with, to a punk kid thief that constantly cheated on his die rolls who we figured would be OK if we kept an eye on him.

I would not play again with any of these people if you paid me to. Life is too short to waste your time around jerks and I would rather not game than play with them. Unfortunately this leads to the unsatisfactory situation of not gaming, particularly if you live in a fairly rural area like I do, if you want to avoid the "problem" gamers in your area. I tried the conventional means of recruiting new players, putting up flyers at gamer friendly places and internet searches for local gamers, but I found that just lures the people you are trying to escape, since they are usually looking for a new game. I met a couple of gamers in college, but they didn't stick, probably because college populations are transient by nature.

I found a couple of different solutions to the problem and while they may not work for everyone, they worked for me. First, I married a gamer girl and raised gamer kids. I recognize that this is a long term project though, so for most people I would actually recommend my other solution:

Join the SCA. I have met more gamers through the SCA than any other place in my life. Now, it is a medieval history organization, but there are a lot of D&D players there. And other RPGs. And Wargamers. And sci-fi and fantasy fans. Since I first joined the SCA I have gamed with more SCAdians than non-SCAdians and I have never lacked for anyone to game with.

Additionally, depending on what aspects of the SCA might appeal to you, it can be good exercise, which many of us gamers could really use; or you might actually learn something about the general time period in which most of our fantasy RPGs (kind of) take place. I like the fighting, but even if that doesn't appeal to you there are myriad other aspects to the SCA. For instance nearly every SCA event has a feast, so you can try some medieval food. The SCA is also social, which can be helpful to some of us; you can make new friends, even if they aren't gamers, or even a future spouse. I didn't meet my wife there, but I know a lot of couples that did meet in the SCA; it kind of screens out people that don't share a certain level of common interest I guess.

Enough of the SCA recruiting message, you'll either be interested or you won't. I just mention it because, although everyone in the SCA has at least heard of gaming, many gamers have never heard of the SCA.

Anyway, I know Gnome Stew wasn't telling us to game with jerks, I just needed to get the message out there that you don't have to game with jerks. There are other options.

I also had a bit of a rant building about how the advent of MMORPGs like WoW or it's ancestor Everquest kind of ruined D&D, but it's probably been done better in the past and I am not feeling it right now.

1st Game!

First game of the new campaign, very exciting. The game started a little slow, it can be hard to get Em to settle in; John too if the mood isn't striking him when it's game time, so it took a bit of prodding from myself and Ashli to get the game moving. I gave them a couple of different rumors of where to seek out adventure. There is a newly discovered dungeon complex to the north or they could search for a lost tomb in the vast marsh across the Averyraen from Castra. They chose search for the tomb (although John wanted to go find the Dwarves in their ancient kingdom)and into the marshes they went. The first day went without incident, other than Em nearly losing a boot in thick mud and everyone being made miserable by mosquitoes, gnats and leeches.

The first night however did not pass uneventfully. They divided into four one-man watches Drissneer (John) had third- he wanted first, but Em called it before he did- and got a random encounter with a giant frog. I was merciful and made it only one, reasoning that restarting the campaign after the first random encounter would suck. Drissneer woke his party with a shout and charged it. He succeeded in taking it out largely alone- one minor hit from Sister Brangwen (Mona), otherwise all his.

Next watch was Sister Brangwen's and she got a Hobgoblin patrol in the predawn. I figured they must have been attracted by the party's fire and come to investigate. Sister Brangwen was more alert than Drissneer had been and woke her fellow party members quietly so they could prepare for battle. The Hobgoblins drew up in a battle line just outside the range of the light from the campfire, I had them roll initiative when they reached visible range for the party and the battle commenced.

Since Drissneer and Sister Celeste (Ember) were still armoring up-2 rounds for Drissneer, 3 for Celeste; So Sister Brangwen charges their archer but misses. Rosie (Ashli) fired off a round from her shortbow and dropped one, then they went. They surrounded Sister Brangwen, 2 rushed Rosie and their archer moved to get a clear shot at Drissneer.

Long story made short- a series of really bad dice rolls on both sides left the party with three down, only Drissneer was left standing. One Hobgoblin fumble killed another adjacent Hobgoblin while they were double-teaming Rosie. Heroic Sister Brangwen got unlucky 2 rounds in and got hit by 3 out of 4 that were surrounding her knocking her into negatives. The next morning I ruled that everyone could be conscious so they could more easily head back to town, they made it back without incident and stayed at the inn. It was fun and after that we broke to make dinner and watch Doctor Who, since it was a school night we had to stop.

Next time we'll start having passed a couple days and healed everyone to full.

Prepping the setting

The new sandbox campaign starts this weekend. The setting is this: Humanity (and by extension demi-humanity) has fallen on hard times. Their world has been over-run by humanoids (and worse) in the recent past. The "Home-base" of the PCs is a fortified town on what used to be the border between two mutually antagonistic human kingdoms, the great powers of their time. Those kingdoms set aside their differences ultimately to fight the threat of the massive invasion but failed anyway to stave off their destruction. Losing armies of humans and their demihuman allies retreated to this fortified zone some 30 years ago and have relatively little contact with the outside world. I keep picturing a fantasy version of the "Twilight 2000" setting, but it is actually more like "What if aliens invaded the earth at the height of the cold war", only in a fantasy setting.

Anyway, humans and demihumans control only fortified or easily defensible areas, and not all of them. The great kingdoms of the past are fallen. Trade is all but gone. Large swathes of formerly civilized territories are under the control of tribes of various races of humanoids or worse. Humans (and demihumans) in those territories are either gone, enslaved or food. Or a combination of those. D&D post-apocalyptic.

This all fits with my theme of an ancient and ongoing multi-planar war, and I get to tie it into the last campaign on ran in Garnia where the players failed to stop Horsa and his minions. Not their fault really, the campaign ended prematurely, but that kind of seemed the direction it was headed in.

So in my official timeline now Horsa managed to become Aetheling of the Westermarch and his minions unsealed the gates between worlds, so the dwindling and weak humanoids of the world were immediately reinforced by the legions of their brethren. The hordes of darkness also had access to the ancient Dwarven roads which made the kingdoms largely indefensible and the unknown reaches of the underworld once again had access to the surface. Ancient evils vanquished long ago returned, other planar threats emerged leading vast armies of evil humanoids.

Ultimately, this did not go well for Horsa or his minions. Not only was the entirety of the Westermarch over-run, but the entire kingdom of Wodanslund; it's capital Wodansburgh burned to the ground and it's people largely became food for the slavering horde. Wodanish is a language spoken by very few people now refugees all, they have no homeland to return to.

The campaign area is the Garnian-Frodian border region, starting in an outlying town inside Garnia- the region where the Averyraen and the Aver- something I can't recall at the moment and I can't find my map right now, the one that runs up into the old Dwarven kingdom of Khazarak. All of this was the center of the ancient elven empire, and is home to the mysterious Tomari people- a human ethnic group whose origins are lost and speak a language unrelated to any other in the world.

I like languages and cultures. Anthropology is the DM's friend.